


Night shift

by Julie_Anne



Series: Through the wars [3]
Category: Maurice (1987), Maurice - E. M. Forster
Genre: Domestic Bliss, M/M, Music and poetry, Somewhat shady business, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 02:44:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10066937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Julie_Anne/pseuds/Julie_Anne
Summary: Alec works some nights. Maurice gets insomnia and discovers poetry.





	1. Amazingly sweet

A sharp cry pierced the air in the delivery room. The young woman had been in labour for over ten hours now. Alec held her hand and spoke softly. He knew she was very tired and very scared. It was the third birth that evening, an absolute record for such a small Clinic, but the other two had been quick. This girl was having her first baby and she was exhausted. Her dark hair was damp with sweat, clinging to her forehead and neck. She looked pale and drawn, and her breathing was shallow and quick.

\- Don’t do that, dear, you’ll tyre yourself uselessly. Try breathing slowly. Inhale through your nose, gently… count to five… that’s it… now exhale, blowing slowly… There! Keep it like that, slow and steady.

The woman looked at him and smiled feebly. She was filled with gratitude for that man’s presence at her side. To think she had been somewhat apprehensive when first she laid eyes on him. It was so unusual to see a man in that line of work!

\- Thank you… I’m just so tired…!

\- I know, dear, but it’ll soon be over. You’ve been very brave and we’re nearly there. Keep breathing… I’ll be here for you.

The doctor lifted his head and smiled. He liked having Scudder in the delivery room. He was all practical, no nonsense, strong when strength was needed, and amazingly sweet with the mothers, much more than some women nurses who could be rather strict occasionally.

-The head is crowning. Next contraction will do it. Now, Mrs. Harmon, the next time you feel a contraction, hold your breath and push as hard as you can…

\- Hold my arm and squeeze … - Alec told her – It will help. And scream, if you feel the need.

Ten minutes, a few ragged screams and some contractions later, the baby was out, crying heartily, and the mother could rest. It was a fine, healthy baby boy. Alec’s hand was almost numb and he would have the bruised marks of Mrs. Harmon’s fingers in the morning. Maurice would ask about it, worried and he knew what his answer would be. « _It’s all in a day’s work. A woman in labour, poor dear. You’d be astonished at the strength it takes. It’s like pushing a heavy rock up a steep slope!_ »

\- Congratulations, Mrs. Harmon, you have a perfect baby son! Nurse! – called the doctor – Here, take care of this little man, he’s fit as a fiddle. I must wait for the placenta.

Alec carefully took the little crying creature in his arms, wrapping him tightly in a cotton blanket.

\- There we go, little one. Hush… let’s bathe and dress you to meet your Mummy. – he cradled the new born close to his body, his voice very low and soothing and the baby stopped crying at once.

\- I don’t know how you do that, Scudder! It’s magic!

\- Nothing to do with magic, doctor, just plain common sense. He’s been all snug inside his mother’s womb, he’s cold now. All a new born baby needs is a tight warm blanket around him and a soothing voice.

With practiced care and swiftness, Alec bathed, measured and weighted the little one, dressed him, wrapped him in a blue blanket and, having taken notes on the measures, brought him back to his mother’s side. She was resting now, her eyes closed, but she opened them as he came nearer.

\- Oh, he’s so beautiful! He looks so tiny…! Can I hold him?

\- Of course you can. He’s your son! You did all the hard work… Here, I’ll give you a hand.

He put the small bundle next to her and helped the mother wrap her left arm around it. She looked at her son in wonder. « _My little man…_ » she whispered very softly. Then exhaustion took over and she fell asleep.

\- Poor girl, almost eleven hours in labour! Scudder, take the little one to the nursery and I’ll have an orderly take the mother to her room. Let’s hope no one else chooses tonight to come to the world… what a night!

Carrying the sleeping baby to the nursery, Alec looked at the clock on the wall. Two thirty eight a.m. He’d had a tiresome afternoon and this was proving to be a busy night. The small nursery room was almost full.

The Clinic was small, yet it had an obstetrician and although most women in La Valletta gave birth at home with the help of an older female relative or a midwife, these three mothers were alone in Malta, the wives of Government employees, husbands away on work, no relatives to turn to. Alec was at all times very considerate with patients, but was especially careful and gentle with women in labour. He never ceased to be amazed at the amount of strength needed to give birth, and the life threatening, painful experience it was.

He carefully copied all information concerning the baby on a card and put it inside the baby’s cot. He looked in to see the mother, but she was sound asleep. Head Nurse approached.

\- We’ll let her sleep for half an hour more and then bring her the baby to feed. I’ll ask nurse Finch to do it. – she looked at Alec, before adding – I expect Mrs. Harmon will be more at ease feeding with a woman in the room…

He smiled at her carefully chosen words.

\- Of course, you’re right as usual. Anyway, my shift ends at four. I must go and have the tour with nurse Finch in ten minutes, she’ll be ready in time to fetch baby Harmon.

He knew the older woman had opposed his working at the Clinic at first, saying the patients would not trust a good looking man as nurse; and it would be awkward to have a man assisting deliveries and caring for new born babies. However, the obstetrician had worked with Alec during the war and thought the world of him and the final decision had been his. The man had trained in London with a colleague who had some unorthodox notions about childbirth and had moved to Malta bringing those notions with him. In a few months, Head Nurse had been the first to say she had been wrong, young Scudder was a fine nurse and she wouldn’t trade him for any girl.

Alec spent the last half hour of his shift briefing nurse Finch. They ended the round at the nursery door.

\- Three little ones in the nursery. Harmon is to have his first feed as we finish. See that Mrs. Harmon eats something before going to sleep again. She’s had a long labour, poor thing. First child… The other two, follow the regular schedules, mothers know the drill…

Outside it was dark and quiet. He looked up to see the sky. It was clear, dark and starry, with a thin crescent moon. There was a faint warm breeze bringing the smell of a bakery oven nearby mingled with the ever-present sea smell. He had a twenty-minute walk home through narrow and steep streets, all deserted and silent. He walked at a steady pace, longing for their cool, comfortable bed. He knew Maurice would wait up with a book; he always did when Alec was on the night shift, he claimed he couldn’t get used to sleeping alone. Alec pleaded him not to, but he loved it and was looking forward for their night shift night’s routine, a wonderful rub on his aching shoulders, a bit of cuddling, and lazy, drowsy talking about each other’s day, before curling up together to sleep.

At the door, he searched his pockets for the key and entered trying not to make any noise. He went to the kitchen to have a glass of cold milk and some of those delicious biscuits Maurice had baked under Giovanna’s supervision. He heard a cricket. «I wonder how that little rascal came in and where it lurks…!» he thought, carefully climbing the stairs in the dark.


	2. Fortnightly insomnia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poetry to spend a sleepless night.

Maurice woke up. It was little past midnight and everything was silent. He could actually hear a cricket somewhere. Before opening his eyes, his hand instinctively felt for Alec, but he wasn’t there.

«Night shift…», he muttered with a sigh.

He hated Alec’s night shifts. He wondered if he had ever detested anything with the same irrational animosity he devoted to Alec’s night shifts. He knew it was a silly, selfish thing to feel. Alec was a wonderful nurse. He was such a warm and gentle creature, he felt such a deep concern for all living things, healing and everything related came naturally to him. Maurice felt a small pang of jealousy. He sometimes wished to keep all that caring and warmth for himself alone. Now for Julie too, of course.

« You are being childish, Maurice Hall! Grow up…! Alec is just away for a few hours twice a month. You can share him with ailing people, they need him too, maybe they need him more…», he lectured himself turning the light on.

He knew he couldn’t command sleep, however. He got up, put on his dressing gown and went to the open window to smoke. The warm night filled the room with a whiff of sea air, salty and smooth. After, he went downstairs, very quietly, to make some tea. He sat at the big kitchen table with a cup of hot milky tea and a tin of the oatmeal biscuits Giovanna had been teaching him to bake the day before. He loved the uneven texture and the layers of flavour in each bite, roasted oatmeal, honey, almond, butter and brown sugar all combining in the most delicious way.

\- It’s a good thing you walk so much - Alec had told him that very morning at the breakfast table, after approving the biscuits - or you’d be growing fat as a hedgehog in autumn! What an appetite!

-Are you implying I eat too much? You dare do that while actually demolishing a breakfast that size! You have some nerve!

\- I’m different! I have a physically demanding work, Mr. I-do-all-my-business-over-the-telephone! You sit on your rump all morning. - and he had kissed him, a delicious kiss tasting of almonds and brown sugar.

They could hear Julie skipping rope in the patio, and singing:

 _«_ _Not last night but the night before,_

_Twenty-four robbers came knocking at my door._

_As I ran out, they ran in,_

_Hit them o’er the head with the frying pin.»_

\- It’s frying pan, Julie, not frying pin. - cried Maurice from the kitchen.

\- But then it won’t rhyme... - complained Julie.

\- Try rolling pin then… - suggested Giovanna who was carrying a basket of clean sheets upstairs, and they heard the little girl resuming both skipping and singing.

\- Thank God, Julie makes you run after her! By the way, what’s that she’s singing? Sounds rather gruesome…

\- I expect four year olds are all a little bloodthirsty. Don’t worry… - he’d answered kissing Alec back, softly nibbling at his lower lip - She learned it from Giovanna, but my sisters used to sing something along the same lines…

He picked another biscuit, as the recollection of Alec’s kiss and of the smoothness of his lips sent a shiver down his spine. He now marvelled at how he had lived before having that wonderful man by his side.

He finished his tea, put the lid back on the biscuit tin, washed his cup and went up again. At the nursery door, he stopped for a few seconds, listening. The child’s soft and regular breathing was barely audible. Julie slept peacefully. He peeped in. She was curled up under her bedclothes, only a few blond wisps of hair and a small hand visible.

The alarm clock on Alec’s night-table read two a.m. Alec would end his shift at four. Maurice went downstairs again to fetch a book from the living room bookcase. He knew from experience he wouldn’t sleep before Alec arrived. He was accustomed by this time to his fortnightly insomnia and made no noise moving about the house at night. Giovanna had chosen the ground floor bedrooms, close to the kitchen, because of her boys, so she could be carefree. She had been terrified of them falling down the stone stairs when they were smaller. Besides, she was a sound sleeper.

Returning to the room, he sat on the bed, pilled the pillows behind his back and opened the book. He had grown to love poetry these last few years. He had abandoned his habit of calming down his sleepless hours with music since they had Julie. It wouldn’t do playing Mozart or Tchaikovsky on the gramophone at two thirty a.m. with a baby sleeping next door to their room. Therefore, he had turned to poetry and found in it the same soothing quality.

Music, he had learned to love with Clive, but poetry was somehow Alec’s gift. He did love music but although music could still melt him inside with a deep sadness or a ferocious joy; poetry allowed him to set the pace, repeat, re-read. Words silently read in a poem became his own, as if the poem was coming from an inside voice, an intimately stirring experience, so akin to lovemaking.

One of the many benefits of living in Malta was the continual arrival of merchant ships from almost everywhere. Alongside all the transactions he engaged in, he frequently ordered books.

_«You must be the strangest fellow I’ve ever met! You make all the right contacts for me to get rid of a load of guns that mysteriously turned up in my warehouse, and then you call me to cable a Captain to bring you old poetry books from America. Poetry books, for Pete’s sake! You’re a regular nut case!»_

These words he had heard from the man who had brought him this particular book, an 1889 edition of Walt Whitman’s _Leaves of Grass_ , an old and worn book with a simple paper cover.

 _«Just a fancy of mine…»,_ he had answered dismissively, _«This edition was printed the year I was born. You know how it is, some men collect post stamps, I collect old books…»_ He’d had the book carefully bound in plain blue leather and had just brought it from the bookbinder’s on the way back from Julie’s afternoon walk in the park.

_«(…)_

_O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me, and returns again_

_never to separate from me,_

_And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades, this_

_calamus-root shall,_

_(...)»_

The beautiful words of the poem did the magic. He read and re-read them until he could close his eyes and hear them inside his head, and he lost track of time. He was called to reality by muffled, cautious steps on the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fragment is taken from the poem «These I singing in spring», by Walt Whitman, in https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Leaves_of_Grass/Book_V, on 28/02/2017 (because I was 300 km from the book I have at home when I began writing this, and now I’m at home but the book is on the third row at the back of the upper shelf).  
> The skipping rope rhyme Julie sings, I learned it at school and actually made the same complaint about «pan» not rhyming.


	3. My comrade

Alec entered the room and gave Maurice a weary smile. He’d been waiting and reading poetry, Alec could tell. He could see the book on the night table and that dreamy glow in his friend’s look.

\- You waited up…! I love it, but you should not make a habit of it, you know. It’s bad for you…

Maurice returned the smile and got up to meet him.

\- I cannot sleep without you, no matter how hard I try. – he cupped Alec’s face in his hands and stooped slightly to kiss him – Hmmm, you still taste of butter and brown sugar!

\- Had a couple of those delicious biscuits of yours and a glass of milk in the kitchen. You should at least try to sleep. I worry…

\- Don’t. I just stopped trying, that’s all. Here, let me help unbutton you…

\- Oh, please do! I’m so tired...

\- Poor Alec! That bad? – he asked.

\- That bad! Three deliveries since I went in! Three more tiny creatures in this world… Two boys and a girl, all healthy and screaming. It’s a wonderful work, but tonight I’m worn out!

He sat on the bed. Maurice kneeled behind him, rubbing the tension out of his friend’s shoulders and neck, his hands carefully tending to the knotted muscles, hard and painful. Alec groaned softy, gradually relaxing under his touch.

\- Oh, that feels so good! How was your day?

\- Uneventful. Giovanna made marmalade. Julie and Santo sampled the last bit from the pot and got so sticky we had to bathe them both in the patio. I think Julie was actually inside the pot at some time, she had marmalade on her shoes! Imagine washing jam out of Julie’s hair! Mario brought home a stray kitten. We let him keep it, so now we have a cat. Be careful where you step tomorrow, it’s all grey with white paws, so small it could curl up comfortably inside a teacup. Went to the park with Julie, picked my newly bound book on the way back. Normal day, really.

\- New book?

\- Yes, and beautiful too. I’ll read you a bit tomorrow night. You’ll like it, it has an almost hypnotic power…

\- I’ll love it for sure if you read it to me.

Alec leaned back and looked up. From that angle, Maurice seemed so much taller than him it made him smile.

\- God, you’re tall! Bend down and kiss me, I am too tired to move up! For now, all I want is to lie down close to you, have your arm around me and sleep.

The night was warm, so they wore only their pyjama bottoms and Alec simply pulled a linen sheet over them. Spooning Alec, wrapping one arm around his waist and softly kissing his neck, Maurice felt suddenly very sleepy.

\- My comrade… - he whispered tenderly – I love you so much…!

\- What’s that you called me?

\- My comrade. It’s from that poem I was reading.

He pulled Alec closer and turned out the light. All the anxiety and sleeplessness gone, he felt drained and comfortable, and drifting into sleep. They were settling on their usual sleeping embrace. Their words became increasingly blurred, the tone steadily lower.

\- I’ll have to go out tomorrow early, there’s a ship sailing in from Cape Town at nine...

\- Oh, H.M.S. Scoundrel arriving, is it?

That was the general name Alec gave to all the ships Maurice waited for.

\- Hum hum – muttered Maurice, kissing his shoulder, half-asleep – Brings me something to forward to Amsterdam… I’ll need to call someone I know about it…

Alec nestled against him, feeling the heat and moist of his regular breath on his back. He sighed, deeply inhaling the fresh smell of lavender from the bed linen and Maurice’s distinctive scent of almond soap, cigarette smoke and clean sweat.

\- Love you… he whispered.


End file.
